


A Spoonful of Nutella

by LucysPromDress



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkward Flirting, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Not Beta Read, Nutella, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-09-02 14:48:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16789069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucysPromDress/pseuds/LucysPromDress
Summary: Insomniac Cas finds a handsome stranger eating Nutella in his kitchen in the middle of the night.Will he ever meet him again?Based on a prompt.***On Hiatus!***





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel had it, and he had it bad.  
  
Insomnia.  
  
It was going to be another one of those nights. The clock on his nightstand was showing 2:28 A.M. and as of yet he hadn’t been to sleep yet or done anything close to it. Eyes heavy, he’d been staring at an infomercial about a home gym on the television and zoned out for the past few hours. There had been a small span of time that he was excited about that product and had ordered it. His body was on the slender side and had always been well defined, but he could always do with a decent workout. Ever since he had opened his own business a few years ago getting down to the gym was a hassle, but with something at home perhaps the sitting and vegetating because he was dead on his feet could change. A workout added to his morning running routine would be perfect.  
  
Seriously though, everything else aside, if Chuck Norris was selling it, he was buying — _obviously_ — but now he just wondered idly if he would still get to keep the free gift if he blamed the impulse purchase on sleeplessness and being out of his mind and sent the whole thing back. Could he afford a home gym?  
  
And then he decided he didn’t care.  
  
 _Who cares_?  
  
He just wanted to sleep. He would sleep on the weight bench if it played him a lullaby and made him sleep.  
  
This insomnia was going to be the death of him. The older he got the longer his bouts with sleeplessness became. At one time he was able to blame the day or two of little sleep on studying or school work — or maybe the occasional wild days of spring break — but now there wasn’t anything like that to fall back on.  
  
Thankfully it was Saturday night and he didn’t work the next day, or rather, today, but he still wanted to get some kind of shut-eye. He was getting too old to survive on a few random cat naps overnight like he’d done when he was younger. Now that he was nearly thirty, beauty sleep was needed now more than ever, and from the dark circles under his eyes, it was becoming clear that he wasn’t getting his.  
  
From light yoga and a warm bath before bed to cutting out the caffeine after two P.M., he felt like he had tried everything the blessed Internet had said would work. Nothing. A tiny little nap here and there, and by tiny he meant fifteen minutes tops, but never a full hour of sleep much less the eight a person needed to function properly during the day.  
  
Two weeks of this was killing him, but before he resorted to the medical route, Castiel was determined to try to find sleep ‘naturally’. Apparently, he wasn’t above taking suggestions from his brother Gabriel, either.  
  
Apparently, he was desperate.  
  
Gabriel’s suggestion included the red plaid footie pajamas — complete with a ‘back-door trapdoor’ — that he was wearing right now. Admittedly they were comfortable, _really_ comfortable, the material was light and soft, like clouds and cotton and very adept at keeping his skin cool, but they looked like something a lumberjack might wear to bed.  
  
Castiel reasoned that nobody would see him as he was in his own house alone, so he could safely look like a fool in comfort. Although he did draw the line at the matching night cap. Nope. There were just some things a grown man had to put his foot down about.  
  
There was no sleep coming. He looked like an idiot - a cozy idiot - but he wasn’t sleeping. Maybe a mini siesta was in his future closer to the rising of the sun, but definitely not right now. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to try. Cas didn’t care if he fell asleep at his kitchen table reading the paper at this point, as long as he got some sleep.  
  
If not was going to hit himself in the head with a hammer. Hope for a nice eight-hour coma.  
  
The ridiculous footie pajamas made a slip-slide noise as he dragged his feet over the beige carpet of the stairs, the noise loud and becoming annoying even though Cas stopped twice and made sure he wasn’t dragging anything down behind him. It had gotten too quiet in here after he had turned the TV in his room off because he had never heard that noise before, not even in his sock feet. After he put on the milk for his cocoa he’d definitely have to turn on some tunes.  
  
There were faint glows from the night lights he had plugged into electrical sockets lighting the way from the front of his house downstairs through the living room, past the formal dining room and to his kitchen, which sat in the back of his house. His home wasn’t huge, but it was tidy and well kept, furnished to match his taste. The kitchen being his favorite room in the place was the most modernized. Baking was his life, fairly literally, and he loved having space in his home where he could both play and work from home if the need arose.  
  
Tonight though, as he approached, there was an unfamiliar sound coming from his mostly darkened kitchen, making his safe place not feel so safe anymore. Clanking and — chewing? No. Slurping? No. That was - what was that noise? Was it a rat? A slight shuffling and the sound of a throat being cleared put the thoughts of a rodent quickly out of Cas’ mind.  
  
There was a human intruder in his house.  
  
Now, his first thought should have been to go back upstairs and get his phone to call the police and report it, but no. His first instinct was to sneak into his kitchen and surprise the intruder. What he was going to do after his big entrance he didn’t know, he hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. If he was lucky just the appearance of another person would scare the intruder away. If not — he hoped there wasn’t a gun, because he couldn’t compete with one of those.  
  
Speaking of a weapon, Castiel realized that he was empty-handed; he didn’t even have a letter opener because things like that were on his desk upstairs. He could see into the kitchen from where he stood, and for a second was very still as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Cas couldn’t even see a silhouette of a person that didn’t belong but he could still hear the noises of someone eating something in there. God, he hoped it wasn’t his almonds. Those were expensive.  
  
More determined now that his nuts were at risk, Cas made his way quietly into the kitchen, spying one of his smaller rolling pins on the counter near the light switch. He simultaneously grabbed it up while he flipped on the light, bathing the kitchen in a harsh white light that came from fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling.  
  
Following the direction the noise had come from he scanned the room at eye level at first, but his sights fell on a figure seated on the floor shielding his eyes with one hand and holding his silver cook spoon with the other.  
  
Cas thought his heart was going to beat out of his chest as he yelled to the man on his floor. “Put your hands up!” What the hell was that? Even he was cringing at that. He didn’t know what else to say though, it’s not like he planned this or had done this before; he was a baker, not a policeman. Home invasions weren’t on the list of situations he knew how to successfully defuse. If the guy came at him he was pretty sure he could take him, however, even in footie pajamas. Just not if he had a gun.  
  
“Yeah, yeah it’s cool man. Hands are going up,” Cas saw the guy eying the rolling pin that was held up in the air like a bat. Whatever he thought about it, Cas watched him put the jar down on the ground between his legs and his hands in the air as he spoke. “I didn’t — I thought this was my brothers Sam’s house. The back door was open — he told me he’d leave it open. This was totally an accident.”  
  
“No, my house. My kitchen. My cook spoon,” Castiel frowned and thought for a second, narrowing his eyes. “Sam — Winchester? Eileen’s partner?”  
  
“Yes!” The man sounded excited that Cas was familiar and may not brain him with the rolling pin he was holding like a bat. “Sammy’s my little brother. I’m Dean. Maybe he mentioned me to you before?” Dean still had his hands raised but was pointing down to his head with his index finger.  
  
Cas took a few seconds to assess the situation, blue eyes darting all around Dean and trying to size him up, his gaze falling on the jar of Nutella between his legs as he hesitantly lowered his rolling pin, gesturing to Dean that he could put his hands down. If this guy had it in his mind to kill him, he could have tried already. His only weapon was the rolling pin he was still holding, just in case. Dude was probably drunk and harmless looking adorable and grinning up at him with a jar of Nutella that he had obviously brought here himself.  
  
“I haven’t met Sam yet, he just moved in with Eileen not too long ago and I guess he keeps different work hours than I do. He’s normally not out when I leave and still gone when I come home… are you seriously still eating?”  
  
Dean had put his hands down, but as he was listening to Cas made no move to get up from the floor and stuck the spoon back in the Nutella jar, spooning out another mouthful and licking it from the silver spoon. He paused and looked at the spoon, as though he only just realized what he was doing. “Sorry,” was all Dean said as he licked the remnants from the spoon and put it in the jar though he still he made no move to stand or leave.  
  
“Yeah, so it’s pretty late. I’m sure Eileen and Sam won’t like keeping their door unlocked all night.” That was weird. This was weird. Dean was weird, really cute — no, Cas not going to start lusting after the neighbor guy’s brother — but weird. It was all _weird_. Cas waited for a second, quietly, hoping that Dean would take the hint he was giving and go, but when he took a closer look at him and what he thought he saw trickling down the side of his head. “You’re uh,” Cas gestured to a spot on the side of his head. “bleeding. You’re bleeding.”  
  
Dean reached up to touch his head, but as he turned it towards Cas, Cas could see that there was what looked like a large gash on the side of his head, blackish with mostly clotted blood. “Sit still, don’t move,” Cas started fishing around in his cabinets for his first aid kit, and when he found it he grabbed it, wet a rag and got to his knees on the floor next to Dean, who seemed fascinated with poking at and feeling his wound.  
  
“Stop that,” Cas gently smacked Dean’s hand away and looked at his head. “Eat your Nutella,” He definitely wasn’t a doctor or trained at all, but he was almost sure Dean should go and have this thing looked at by one. Initially, he had thought he might be drunk given that he had broken into to Cas’ house with a jar of nasty Nutella that he couldn’t stop eating, but it might be this thing on his head causing it because he certainly didn’t smell strongly of alcohol.  
  
No, he smelled like shampoo and aftershave mingled with sweat, and he was even better looking up close. His eyes — those had to be contacts. That shade of green didn’t really exist in nature, did it? And the freckles, Jesus H there were smatterings of freckles all over his face and neck, light enough that he hadn’t seen them until he got up close but now that he had — there was a perfect line of them marching across the bridge of his nose. _Men_ like this didn’t exist in nature.  
  
 _Shut up, Cas_. No lusting over the new neighbor — or the new neighbors' brother. Those 'boy next door' fantasies just didn’t happen. But if they did, it would be just like this, wouldn’t it? Maybe Dean would be wearing super tight jeans when he broke in, and Cas would discover him while in a towel, dripping wet, fresh from a shower…  
  
“You have nice hands.”  
  
Cas was pulled from his lascivious thoughts and had to stop what he was doing because he hadn’t heard Dean over the sound of the porn playing out in his head. “What’s that?” Cas rummaged through his kit to find a cotton ball for the peroxide he held. Christ, he had met Dean like, what, twelve seconds ago? and Cas already had him shirtless in his mind.  
  
“I said, you have nice hands, I mean the one you didn’t cover with that yellow glove thing,” Dean abandoned the spoon in the Nutella jar between his legs and took Cas’ hand between both of his. Cas stopped rummaging and looked at Dean. For a few seconds, there was heavy eye contact made between the pair; Castiel was too surprised by the touch to say anything right away and Dean was smiling and bleeding, the latter unnoticed by the pair.  
  
“Oh yeah, this,” Cas flexed the fingers of his gloved hand and held it out for a second, and smiled sheepishly. “It’s clean. I haven’t used it yet.” That was a cool thing to say, but even despite the glove talk, Cas could swear that there was a charged moment between them. It may have been in his imagination, but he would swear there was something between them and the eye lock they shared.  
  
 _I got passion in my pants and I ain’t afraid to show it_  
Cas and Dean both blinked, whatever spell they had been under for the last three seconds broken by the song that floated on the air between them.  
 _I’m sexy and I know it_  
Cas was the first of them to recognize that the music was coming from a cell phone, Dean’s cell phone, which was lighting up the pocket of the man's plaid shirt. Cas grabbed it and without thinking hit the answer call button.  
  
“Dean, where are you? You walked to the store like, three hours ago. Are you —”  
  
“Sam?” Cas interrupted, noticing that Dean was still bleeding and applied light pressure and some gauze. “I’m Cas, from next door. Dean’s here. I think — I know he has a cut on his head. I was trying to bandage it up, but I think he might need stitches. You might want to get him to the hospital to check — yes. Yes, that’s me. The back door is open. Yes,” Cas looked at Dean and frowned. “I don’t know, I just found him eating Nutella on my kitchen floor about ten minutes ago. He seems a little confused.”  
  
It took Sam all of twenty seconds after they hung up before a light knock was heard on Castiel’s door and Sam entered the room. He crouched down next to Castiel and gently lifted the gauze he was holding, breathing slightly labored as he examined Dean. God, that concerned brother thing was adorable. He wondered which one of them was older.  
  
“Yeah, that looks deep. And there’s another one,” he pointed further back in Dean’s hairline as Cas craned his head to look, and then Sam grasped his brother’s chin lightly while he looked into his eyes. “Dean, how did this happen?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I remember I wanted some jam for toast in the morning and — that’s about it.”  
  
“We’re going to the ER, Dean, okay?” Sam said as he took the jar and the spoon from Dean. He and Cas gently helped Dean to his feet and Sam put one arm around his brother’s waist to steady him. “Um, Cas, thanks for this. And we’re really sorry for waking you up at this time of night.”  
  
“Yeah, don’t think anything of it. Just get him looked at and I hope he’ll be okay.”  
  
Cas watched as they crossed over into the yard next door together and then drove away a few minutes later. He hoped that Dean would be all right and that he wouldn't remember the pajamas that Cas had been wearing the night before when he went next door to return his Nutella to him tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

After another night of no sleep and the strange incident that involved him finding his new neighbor’s crazy hot (who might actually be crazy _comma_ hot) brother bleeding from a head wound in his kitchen and eating Nutella, Cas knew he looked like crap run over by crap that was driving a crap truck. He didn’t need a mirror to tell him how bad he looked but he was standing in front of one anyway, and boy did it have a few nasty things to say.  
  
Tired. Stressed. Old. He _felt_ it. The mirror and the harsh bathroom lighting just highlighted the dark circles under his eyes, which oddly, made them look bluer than they normally did. Then again it could have been the chalky white pallor of his skin that made his eyes stand out like they were.  
  
“Vampire,” he hissed, foamy mouth grinning humorlessly at the mirror to look at his flat canines.  
  
“Jesus, Cas, somebody needs to put you out in the sun.”  
  
“Remind me to change my locks,” Cas didn’t even startle or have to turn his head; he knew the familiar and annoying voice behind him came from his older brother, Gabriel. Gabriel had since moved to stand behind him and was looking curiously at their reflections in the mirror, and then on to making faces at Cas in the glass. The younger Novak of course, rolled his eyes and continued to brush his teeth.  
  
“No that’s cool, I’ll just come in your back door,” Gabriel said as he left the bathroom to sit on the edge of Castiel’s unmade bed. “Word on the street is that you leave the door unlocked to entertain wounded men who wander in at two in the morning.”  
  
“Word on the street?” Sounded more like ‘worr on a stwee?’ as Cas, toothbrush dangling out of his mouth, looked over at Gabriel, puzzled. How did he find out about that already? It was barely ten in the morning and he was pretty sure he hadn’t called him or said anything to anyone. Right? Or had his insomnia gotten so bad that he was blacking out now? Still confused, but a little more alert now, Cas spit and rinsed quickly and came out of the bathroom. “Who told you that? Not that I was _entertaining_ anyone but — who told you?”  
  
“Uh, Sam’s my lawyer. One of them, anyway. I saw him helping his bro out of the car when I pulled up this morning and we chatted a for a few after he got him settled,” Gabe shoved a small, Tiffany blue bag and a medium sized cup of steaming coffee at Cas and sat back against the headboard and popped his gum. “Weird that he lives next door to you.”  
  
Cas placed the bag on the small night table next to his bed and sat down at the edge, shoving Gabriel’s legs out of the way as he did. The cup was a plain, white styrofoam one, but Cas knew by the bag that both had come from his bakery and that Hannah was at work, making her banana nut bread. He could smell the pleasant aroma of the warm slice through the closed bag.  
  
The coffee was black, just the way he preferred it. He was a pastry chef — yes, he went to school for this -- and bakery owner. Nibbling on this and that all day long was one of the perks of his career, but he had to keep his sugar down somehow.  
  
“I see you tried out the p.j.’s I got you,”  
  
Mid-sip of his coffee and thinking about what it meant for him if Sam was Gabriel’s lawyer and about those unreal green eyes that had looked up at him with such trust as he had cleaned Dean’s wound, Cas glanced over at his brother with a ‘hmm’? on his lips. And then it occurred to him as he looked down: he’d been wearing those — those _things_ last night when he’d found Dean in his kitchen. Jesus Christ. How could he forget that? By the sudden twitch of his lips and the low giggle he gave, it had clearly occurred to Gabriel as well.  
  
Cas really hated Gabriel.  
  
He decided not to dignify the question or the laugh with a response, and changed the subject instead, steering clear of talk of his neighbor, his brother or anything that could remotely be mistaken for interest in the topic. Of course, that only stopped Gabriel for a few minutes. By the time that Cas was changed into a pair of track pants and a t-shirt, Gabe was right back on the subject.  
  
“Soooo Dean,” Gabriel said out of nowhere like he was picking up where they left off. “Good lookin’ dude. If you’re into dudes, which I am not. But you are. And Sam says he’s into guys.”  
  
The way Gabriel dragged out the last word he said made it more than obvious that it was a hint, that he thought he was being helpful. Damn if that little tidbit didn’t send a pleasant chill running down Cas’ spine, but he wasn’t ever going to admit that to his brother, who at times, could take helpful too far. Instead, Cas side eyed his brother like he had grown another head since he had looked at him last and shook his head. “I can get my own dates, Gabe, thanks.” Gabriel wasn’t fazed by the words and continued to look at Cas expectantly. “Yeah, I guess he was attractive. He was pretty bloody and helpless when I saw him last night so his looks, good or not, weren’t exactly as high on my list of priorities as getting him to stop bleeding was. Not to mention that the guy had just broken into my house at two in the morning and was sitting in my kitchen eating out of a jar and making himself at home.”  
  
By the time Cas had finished talking Gabriel was shaking his head and snorting out his laughter. “That kind of shit could only happen to you, Castiel.”  
  
Cas looked at him nonplussed for a few seconds before his laughter and the hilarity of the situation became contagious and he broke out in a smile. He supposed he could see the humor, but there was still the mystery of why Dean had been bleeding. He hadn’t even asked Gabriel how he was or what he had learned about what had happened. Which he immediately fixed.  
  
“Sam said they pulled glass out of another wound they found on the back of his head, so he’s pretty sure someone hit him, but he doesn’t know why or what he was hit with. He wasn’t wet and didn’t have any stains or smells on him, and he had his wallet, so until Dean remembers — it’s a mystery.”  
  
Well, that was fucked up. Just out to get Nutella and he got into a fight or jumped? Supposedly. Dean could have started it, after all, Cas didn’t know him well enough to speculate. Was this guy a burglar? He _did_ just come right into Castiel’s home rather easily and without making any noise. Granted, the door was unlocked, but still. Maybe he had been caught doing that to another house and hadn’t gotten as lucky as he had at Cas’ place? The only thing he had done there was sit on the floor and eat his Nutella like he belonged there. Maybe he should give him the benefit of the doubt; they did kind of have a neighborly connection.  
  
And he said Cas had pretty hands.  
  
Those emerald green eyes and pink pouty lips could be disguising a criminal though. Until he really knew more about him and his possible criminal activities Cas needed to try to put his libido aside and focus on the facts, which would be easier if he actually knew what they were. Later this evening he would return the hazelnut spread and see what this scruffy, gorgeous could-be criminal was all about.  
  


***

“Aw, no, sorry man, he’s not here. You missed Dean by like, an hour. I told him not to drive anywhere yet, but he insisted he was fine now. He has to work in the morning.”

The disappointment must have shown on Cas’ face because Sam quickly tried to soften the blow by adding that Dean would eventually be back and then he invited Cas in for a beer.

Cas waved off the invitation inside. “I really just came to see how he was doing, and to return this,” he held out the half-eaten jar of Nutella to Sam, and they both chuckled. “Did he remember how his head thing happened? Gabriel was telling me he had another wound that I didn’t see, I think three total?”

“Three, yeah, on his head. His knees were scraped up some from where he fell down. He actually said that he, like an idiot, jogged up behind this woman on the sidewalk to give her a scarf that she dropped. I’m sure she thought he was trying to mug her or something, so she picked up the nearest thing she could grab, which happened to be a glass bottle, and wailed on Dean until he was down. Everything after that is blank for him. He doesn’t remember walking home, but he remembers just suddenly being in your kitchen. He said, in hindsight that chasing after that woman wasn’t the smartest thing he could have done.”

Sam and Cas eventually sat on the small porch and talked, had a couple of beers together and then called it a night. Tomorrow was Monday, the start of the workweek, and they both had jobs to get to. Cas handed over Dean’s jar to Sam, and he made the short trek home, glad that he had made a new friend but a little disappointed that he had missed seeing Dean.


End file.
